Home leave & End of Assignment

Home leave & End of Assignment

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Home leave

Will my company provide my family with visits to our home country?

Most employers recognize the importance of maintaining and renewing relationships with family, friends, and business colleagues in your home country and generally will provide for one trip per year at company expense for you and your family to return home. Some employees take advantage of these trips home to maintain relationships with colleagues, keep abreast of home-office developments, and network, which ultimately can assist the employee in his or her successful repatriation back to the home office.

End of assignment

When my assignment is completed, what provisions will be made for my repatriation?

To facilitate re-integration into your home organization, you should keep in touch with your human resources department and home country line manager throughout your assignment. Most of the policies that assisted you in relocating abroad will be implemented againto smooth your transition home. Temporary living coverage, travel, moving expense, reimbursement of automobile disposal, reimbursement of settling-in costs, and housing assistance are generally provided.

Your allowances will cease when you return; nonetheless, your purchasing power upon return should be the same as if you had remained in your home country.

What if I decide I’d like to stay longer?

Some organizations may extend, or renew, an assignment according to their business needs, but typically not at the request of the assignee. In cases where the organization decided to extend or renew your assignment, depending on the purpose of your international assignment and/or how long your initial assignment was intended for, you may be transitioned to a different international assignment policy (e.g., short-term assignment becomes a long-term assignment). In some instances, your organization could decide to ‘localize’ you — this can happen for employees who have been on assignment for the maximum length of time, typically three to five years, under their long-term assignment policy and there is a desireto keep the employee in the host country. The process of localizing employees differs from employer to employer. In short, the basic premise is that the expatriate will no longer receive expatriate allowances and his or her home-based base salary will become a host-based salary, as if he or she is now a local hire. Companies may differ in the method they use to change the allowances and benefits. For example, some will phase out expatriate allowances over a specific time frame and others will stop all the allowances at once.

Another way of extending your international assignment is to undertake a sequential assignment to another location.